Dan Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is the President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell advocates limited government and fundamental tax reform, and is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations.

In addition to fiscal policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security reform – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.

Europe's Über Bailout.

I’m semi-impressed with the Europeans for choosing the hog-wild approach to bailouts. Not because it is good policy, but rather because it will be a useful demonstration of the old rule that bad policy begets more bad policy (which begets God knows what, but it…

Taxpayers vs Bureaucrats, Part XXIV.

Here’s some more good polling data from the Resurgent Republic website. All demographic groups, including Democrats, agree that excessive pay for federal bureaucrats is a bad thing. Maybe, just maybe, this means the productive people in society are fed up and…

Senator Bennett, R.I.P.

I shed no tears that incumbent Senator Robert Bennett lost his fight to get nominated for a fourth term. His support of the bailout and other big-government policies was a sign that he had become far too comfortable representing established interests and forgot that…

Say Goodbye to England

Okay, the title of this post is an absurd exaggeration, but I am not optimistic about the future of the United Kingdom. Government spending has exploded over the last ten-plus years (the largest expansion in the burden of government spending among developed nations),…

Encouraging Polling Numbers

I realize that public opinion polls are quirky and that answers often depend on how questions are phrased. Nonetheless, these results seem very strong.  As reported on the Bankrupting America website, there is more than three-to-one opposition against a value-added…

Great Moments in Government Stupidity.

The blogging about Greece is too depressing, so let’s kick a couple of government bureaucracies for bone-headed stupidity. This excerpt is from a Pajamas Media story about how the Customs bureaucrats mistakenly confused BB guns for machine guns, and then turned…

Using Welfare to Subsidize Terrorism

Here are some very depressing stories. The Daily Mail reports that a European Court has ruled that the U.K. no longer can impose restrictions on welfare payments to women married to suspected terrorists: A European court has instructed Britain to drop restrictions…

Victory Over Surveillance Statism in Arizona

Here’s a bit of good news to end the weekend. Arizona politicians have been forced to suspend a statewide speed camera program. I’m especially pleased to see that civil disobedience played a role in forcing politicians to pull the plug on the Orwellian…